Breathe Again
by curvesforever
Summary: The man stood in the graveyard as he had done for the last five hundred years, the exact same time and place. Every single day for five hundred years. A long and lonely five hundred years. Waiting. Waiting for something to change.


AU-ish, RPF-ish, but not really…

So read and if it isn't to your taste stop reading, simple as that. I do that sometimes, get into a fic and then something sets me off or makes me think 'well, that's rather disturbing' and stop reading. Not usually because it really is gory or sick like that but because something like my favoured top bottoms, and the description of it lasted for more than a very small paragraph.

Or happened at all.

That sort of thing. You know what I'm talking about? But that won't be an issue here as there is no sexy-times or gory details so if you stop reading it's gonna be because that my work is an eyesore and offensive.

No worries, I get that feeling, go and find something better, I do that's why I don't write much I read better done by other people that actually put in the time to write a good story not just a one shot.

Nothing wrong with one shots though, good to read when you are busy and really should be doing other things.

Right oh, if you've watched the show no spoilers here. If not they are going to be at the bottom not at the top. Right at the beginning, where they would ruin any surprises. Carry on as you were and hope you enjoy it!

(P.S Do not own anything but my story line so don't sue me, poor college student here!)

The man stood in the graveyard as he had done for the last five hundred years, the exact same time and place. Every single day for five hundred years. A long and _lonely_ five hundred years.

Waiting. Waiting for something to change.

Looking at the man you could not have guessed that he had lived to see the world change several times. He just looked like a sad young man, college age if there was to be a guess.

He was tall, long and slender with little of him to spare. Like he was made to be only the essentials of a man, to exist in the background. His hair was dark and curling, brushing softly against the tops of prominent ears. Pale white skin encased him, which framed fathomless blue eyes and bright, almost obscene, red lips.

His clothes were the fashion for young men his age, of the current age. Tight burgundy jeans, long sleeved black shirt over a band logoed t-shirt and worn trainers. Around his wrists were entrance bands for music festivals and a couple of rubber wristbands with charity slogans on. The only strange pieces were an old looking, battered, thick band of silver he wore over his thumb, hardly gleaming in the weak sun light. He twisted it around his thumb repeatedly, the loose metal moving easily. And an antique fog watch hanging from a long brass chain, tucked into his jeans pocket.

But, his face. That youthful face was immeasurably sad. There was no animation in it; it was as if every muscle had paused in the midst of an unnameable grief. His body stood thoughtlessly straight, shoulders back but head tilted to the ground focused on one patch of unremarkable grass. And for the first time since that first time he arrived at this place, he spoke.

He started talking to the air, a soft lilting Irish accent coloured the words, so quietly that all the words were lost to anyone but him, the dead and the wind.

"I miss you." He said, "I miss you so much, it's like I've lost a part of me. And it's always the same. I find my way back to here and remember what it is that I always know that I've forgotten. I didn't come straight into life, I was lost for a while. So very lost. I had forgotten what my duty was, it hurt so much." He reached up and used his thumb to wipe away a silent tear.

"There was never a moment in that first life that I didn't miss you. Every single moment. There was a memory of you everywhere and for a while it was like you'd never left me." He smiled to himself, a quick glance to the silver band, and even that echoed centuries old sorrow, "But then they became a reminder, a constant reminder of what I'd failed to do. My only duty! My reason for fucking existing!," He breathed in deep and continued quietly "and I failed."

"I came back you know. For you. And every life after that, all over the world, in every life imaginable I've come back. And in every one you aren't there. I keep searching, every chance I get, even when I don't remember you, us, how we used to be. You're supposed to come back, you're supposed to come back! That's _your _duty. You…you're supposed to come back."

His hands clenched with impotent rage, "I can't do anything. There's nothing I can do and it kills me. I live like everyone else, and I die like them too but what makes it unbearable is that I used to be able to do something. I used to wield such power, like there never had been and never again will be. Every life I come back and it begins with a blank slate. Tabula rasa. Then, it itches at the back of my mind, I've forgotten, forgotten something important. Something so very important. Sometimes it comes early, sometimes _so late_. But it always comes."

He bit his lower lip as it trembled, his fingers playing with the ring again soothing himself.

"It always comes. I've met the others you know, all of them. Mum. Will. Gaius. Gwen. Freya. Morganna. Gwaine, Lancelot, Percival, Elyan and Leon, the rest of the Knights. Even Uther a time or two. But never you, it's never you."

The man crossed his thin arms over a heaving chest, holding himself together. He sighed and raised his eyes heavenward.

"You know, I'm no-one, I'm nothing in this life. Just tumbling around, trying to find something to fill the time before I inevitably die and begin this miserable existence over again. I met Freya and Harold, that junior knight but for the life of me, I cannot remember his original face, this time around first. Normally it's Mum, hardly ever changes that. Seeing as she is usually the one who gives birth to me and all. However, it was them, or Robert and Jack this time around. Very cute couple."

As his head dropped forwards, his entire body seemed to droop. Shoulders falling, hunching inwards and around his crossed arms. Staring once again at that unassuming patch of brown-green grass. Transfixed.

"Get this; they're my parents! Adoptive of course but loving and caring and everything a boy could ask for. Mum died in childbirth and so my adoption was pretty quick. Robert and Jack are so caring, so like their original lives, they found me here one day on the anniversary of your death sobbing. Wailing to be honest, I'm man enough to admit it. Didn't ask me about it, just let me cry and then settled me at home, said if I wanted an ear they were there. They did threaten castration and violent action towards anyone who had hurt me if I wanted. But didn't pry."

Talking about that day about his death, tears reflexively ached behind his eyes. Waiting to fall like the others already had. He glanced down at his watch and sighed once more. The old-fashioned face read 4:14, half an hour and then it was time to leave.

"I have to leave soon, spent so much time here I should have gotten a bench or something… the thing is I can't keep waiting for you to come back for me… to me. I have to move on and find something else, somebody else. And I know that you can't hear me. I know that you can't see me, I doubt if Avalon is still here the lake disappeared over three hundred years ago but I wanted to tell you that this was the last time. I'm not going to come back anymore, not in this life and not in the next. I hope wherever you are you have all that you wished for, Arthur I really truly do. I love you Arthur always have and always will but…" He tailed off and straightened himself, brushed away more tears, taking one last long look at the grass where the once and future king had passed from the world in his arms.

A voice rung out shockingly loud and unrepentant in the quiet open air, upper class English and full of confidence "Oi, you!"

The man spun on his heel and faced the intruder, and came face to face with the exact replica of the King of Camelot. His athletically toned physique, shaggy blond hair and playful dancing blue eyes.

"Merlin, lost for words, I never thought I'd see the day!"

The Arthur look alike strode across the headstone dotted grass, full of confidence and vitality. He wore denim jeans, dark trainers, a crisp white Oxford shirt and navy jumper that stretched interestingly over his muscled arms and chest.

Merlin, mouth a gape, tried to talk to the replica of the man he lost so long ago. However, he found himself unable.

Arthur, if that was in any form his name now, looked good. Better even then when he was a King. He stood tall, strong and carefree in a way that couldn't be there when the fate of a Kingdom rested on his shoulders. Arthur's eyes were the same bright blue of his first life, shining now with a mischievous youth. He was dressed sharply, expensively, so something's clearly never change.

Merlin could feel fresh tears in the corners of his eyes and his lips tremble with the promise of sobbing. Here right in front of him was the man he had loved for five hundred years and would never stop loving, right there at the end when he was on the verge of giving up. Arthur always had terrible timing, but at least he always saved the day.

Arthur stopped a few paces away, blinding smile slipping slowly off his face.

"You don't remember, do you?" He asked, "Oh damn, you don't remember, Merlin? Please? Do you know who I am?" Arthur's voice began to waver with panic, fearing that he was standing with a stranger. "I've been looking for you, my whole life." He added, "Truly."

Merlin took shaking steps towards the object of his entire universes focus, stopping well within polite personal boundaries. He took in the full lower lip that all the maids wanted to kiss, the high cheekbones, the long straight nose and the handsome set of his face and looked at the eyes that he had missed for lifetimes. The eyes that shuttered for the last time in his arms, the eyes that shadowed with death the last time they were so close to his own. Those clear blue eyes that he had missed so desperately.

He opened his mouth to say a thousand and one thoughts at once, everything he had wanted to say for five hundred years to one of the only people in his lives that ever mattered. Every single quip and remark that had to go unheard, every confession of love and guilt.

"Your taller than me, how did that happen?" Came out instead.

Arthur threw back his head and laughed with his entire body. When his laughter petered down, he looked back down to Merlin and smiled indulgently.

"The first thing in hundreds of years you say to me and that's the question you chose to ask?" He asked quietly.

Merlin ducked his head slightly in embarrassment, but Arthur caught his chin with a crooked finger and tilted it back saying, "Hey, I haven't seen your eyes, or any of you to be honest for five hundred years. I am not letting you hide until I have had my fill of you. And to let you know that's not going to be any time soon."

And for the first time in a hundred years Merlin grinned, quite goofily, at Arthur and reached a hand to trace the face he could never quite draw right from memory.

"You have no idea how long I've waited for you Arthur." Merlin said, "No idea at all. There has been too many lives that I have had to live alone and waiting, for this to be true."

Arthur caught the exploring hand and held it against his cheek.

"Feel this, my skin under your hand, warm, alive and here. And never leaving again," Arthur declared, honesty written across his face like it always was and then he said "I have no bloody idea who gives out the celestial directions for souls to find one another but they should be bloody sacked! Five hundred years it took me to come back, five hundred years until I could find you again. I…"

"Arthur, you could get lost going from you chambers to the courtyard," Merlin interrupted, "and that was in your own home. I hardly think that it was all a celestial beings fault."

"For your information, _Mer_lin, I never got lost, I just wanted to find out how long it would take you to find me, you always were a useless manservant"

Merlin merely raised an eyebrow in response. Arthur smiled back cheekily, his face softened into the expression he always used to wear when the two of them were alone. It was a mixture of fondness, love and exasperation. However, Merlin knew that his own face did the same.

Merlin cleared his throat and spoke "Well, it seems that we have a lot, and I mean a lot of catching up to do." He smiled up at the new taller Arthur, "And we haven't even been formally introduced."

Now Arthur was the one to raise an eyebrow, seeming to say 'oh really, we're doing it this way'.

Posh English accent in full form Arthur replied, "Of course where are my manners," he gallantly bowed, a proper Prince Arthur bow, and then extended a hand, "my name is Bradley James, pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Merlin smirked and curtseyed the way he'd seen hundreds of visiting Princesses and noble Ladies do keeping his eyes on the man in front of him, watching as his eyes went wide and smirked in return. He placed a hand in Arthur's, or rather in Bradleys.

"The pleasure is mine, Mr James, Colin Morgan, at your service." Merlin, or this time around Colin, replied. Arthur raised Merlin's hand to his lips and kissed the back of it.

"Well I've got time, so have you. Let's get properly acquainted Mr Morgan." Arthur said, eyes heating up.

Merlin smiled evilly and replied, tightening his grip on Arthur's hand "No time, Mr James I've got to meet my parent's right about" He glanced down at the watch face for a theatrical flair and then back to Arthur "now, how about you come along too?"

Arthurs face whitened.

_It serves the clotpole right for taking so long_, Merlin thought as he marched happily towards his car dragging a suddenly reluctant Arthur behind. _Meeting my parents and in the first ten minutes, this is going to be fun!_

It wasn't going to be easy, they had both changed and in many ways. Nevertheless, they were Arthur and Merlin, two sides of a coin; neither of them was going anywhere.


End file.
